Pair A Dice Games Corner

September 2026

Strange New Deckbuilder
In some ways, it can feel like weve plumbed the depths of the deck building genre. Last month we talked about the Star Wars Deckbuilding Game with the new expansion — which feel like they are progress, but honing and fixing and standing on the shoulders of the best of the best.
Star Trek: Captain’s Chair feels like a different thing, it feels bigger and newer, like a deckbuilder Ive never seen before. The theme is a holodeck in the 32nd Century where Starfleet cadets can play as the galaxy’s best captain’s ever. 

Each captain has their own deck featuring ships and crew from their shows. There is a light area control element where you can send away teams to try and control planets. You dont have the normal actions like you might in a normal deck builder — gain resources, buy cards, maybe attack — each card tells you what you can do, so each character feels very different. Not precisely asynchronous, but for sure where things feel very, very different.

So Klingons can more easily attack other away teams and try and expand the glory of the Klingon Empire, while Federation ships play the “Strange New Worlds” card to get points for seeking out planets and discovering the deep mysteries of the universe.
Additionally when you shuffle your deck to reset, you shuffle in better cards instead of merely needing to pay for them, akin to a very light tech tree to improve in specific ways.

The game is dense and longer (2+ hours) and rewards multiple plays, learning the nuances, and now includes three products: two core sets, the original blue one which leans toward Next Generation (Picard, Sela, Sisko, and more) characters, and and orange one called To Boldy Go featuring more earlier characters (Kirk, Archer, Khan), plus a straight expansion called Second Contact with Pike, Freeman, and Riker captaining the USS Titan both from Lower Decks.

Finally, it plays 2 player, and solo, which solo according to BGG is the best way to play. I disagree, I like both, and 2 player even more, but solo is an incredible, dense, neat experience. Fun to see strange new concepts and new ideas for deckbuilders, and according to the publisher there’s lots more to come!